Archaeologists at Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia plantation, Monticello, are unearthing the room where Sally Hemings is believed to have lived, allowing for a new way to tell the story of the enslaved people who served our third president. The excavation has once again reminded us that 241 years after the United States was founded, many Americans still don’t know how to reconcile one of our nation’s original sins with the story of its Founding Fathers.

Just before the Fourth of July, NBC News ran a feature on the room, setting off a spate of coverage about the dig. Many of these stories described Hemings, the mother of six children with Jefferson, as the former president’s “mistress.” The Inquisitr, the Daily Mail, AOL and Cox Media Group all used the word (though Cox later updated its wording). So did an NBC News tweet that drew scathing criticism, though its story accurately called her “the enslaved woman who, historians believe, gave birth to six of Jefferson’s children.” The Washington Post also used “mistress” in a headline and a tweet about Hemings’s room in February.

Language like that elides the true nature of their relationship, which is believed to have begun when Hemings, then 14 years old, accompanied Jefferson’s daughter to live with Jefferson, then 44, in Paris. She wasn’t Jefferson’s mistress; she was his property. And he raped her.

On the chaotic day the Trump administration’s travel ban went into effect, high-level Homeland Security officials directed their staff at airports around the country to stiff-arm members of Congress and treat lawyers with deep suspicion.

Members of Congress say they’re shocked by the orders, uncovered in documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from The Daily Beast and The James Madison Project, both of which were represented by the law office of Mark S. Zaid.

“I’m extremely troubled that CBP [Customs and Border Protection] employees would be instructed by superiors to ignore Congressional representatives trying to do their job, especially under such circumstances,” said Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat. “We suspected as much at the time, but it’s jarring to see it in black and white. I’ll be seeking more information from CBP on this matter.”

A CBP official wrote in an email on Jan. 28 that the agency’s employees were forbidden from speaking to members of Congress.

When Alt-Right nutbags publicly try out their stand-up version of twisted culture/race war rhetoric, with ‘relevant’ tidbits long spoon-fed them by their self-loathing token-black ‘mentor’ …Larry Elder author of ‘Stupid Black People’..

The Missouri travel advisory is the first time an NAACP conference has ever made one state the subject of a warning about discrimination and racist attacks, a spokesman for the national organization said Tuesday.

Missouri became the first because of recent legislation making discrimination lawsuits harder to win, and in response to longtime racial disparities in traffic enforcement and a spate of incidents cited as examples of harm coming to minority residents and visitors, say state NAACP leaders.

Those incidents included racial slurs against black students at the University of Missouri and the death earlier this year of 28-year-old Tory Sanders, a black man from Tennessee who took a wrong turn while traveling and died in a southeast Missouri jail even though he hadn’t been accused of a crime.

“How do you come to Missouri, run out of gas and find yourself dead in a jail cell when you haven’t broken any laws?” asked Rod Chapel, the president of the Missouri NAACP.

“You have violations of civil rights that are happening to people. They’re being pulled over because of their skin color, they’re being beaten up or killed,” Chapel said. “We are hearing complaints at a rate we haven’t heard before.”

At the same time, Chapel said, the state government is throwing up barriers to people seeking justice in the courts for discrimination. The travel advisory cites legislation signed by Gov. Eric Greitens that will make it more difficult to sue for housing or employment discrimination.

Asked about the travel advisory on Friday in Kansas City, Greitens said he hadn’t seen it yet. His office did not return messages seeking comment on Tuesday.

Detailed report by State Investigators re: Extensive misconduct by Steve Mnuchin’s One West…and refusal by then State Attorney general to further investigate or bring a case against OneWest, even though State Investigators strongly recommended and advocated for it..

“…In the memo, the leaders of the state attorney general’s Consumer Law Section said they had “uncovered evidence suggestive of widespread misconduct” in a yearlong investigation. In a detailed 22-page request, they identified over a thousand legal violations in the small subsection of OneWest loans they were able to examine, and they recommended that Attorney General Kamala Harris file a civil enforcement action against the Pasadena-based bank. They even wrote up a sample legal complaint, seeking injunctive relief and millions of dollars in penalties.

But Harris’s office, without any explanation, declined to prosecute the case.

“After years peddling the kind of dangerous mortgage-backed securities that eventually blew up the economy, Mnuchin swooped in after the crash to take a second bite out of families by aggressively — and sometimes illegally — foreclosing on their homes,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in a statement last month. Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, warned: “Given Mr. Mnuchin’s history of profiting off the victims of predatory lending, I look forward to asking him how his Treasury Department would work for Americans who are still waiting for the economic recovery to show up in their communities.”

Obamacare isn’t perfect, but I’m not
even sure if most of the people who hate it so much have any real idea why. If you know what a libertarian is, and you hate Obamacare, I’ll trust your opinion. If not, and you’re white, and you hate Obama and Obamacare, I’m just going to assume you’re a racist, and be extremely comfortable in my skin doing so.

“Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.”

“There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.”

“What one does realize is that when you try to stand up and look the world in the face like you had a right to be here, without knowing that this is the result of it, you have attacked the entire power structure of the Western world.”

“The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.”

“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”

“If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they’re real for you whether they’re real or not.”

“The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.”

“It is very nearly impossible… to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.”

“Fires can’t be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.”

“It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be.”

It’s like the real-life Celebrity Apprentice in Washington, DC right now and it is just a clusterfuck over there. The Cheeto Satan White House got more turnover than a waffle maker. The latest casualty in Mango Mussolini’s administration is Anthony Scaramucci, who only lasted 10 DAYS before he got the ax.

I’ve played Monopoly games that lasted longer than Scaramucci had
this job. Well, actually, he hadn’t even officially started as the
Communications Director. His start date was August 15. This broham didn’t get fired on his day off. HE HADN’T EVEN BEGAN YET. This is in a week where his wife filed for divorce and he missed the birth of his child. The Mooch is having the worst week EVER.

Phew! Anywho, HR gotta be exhausted! All this paperwork they’ve had to do for nothing.

Of course LuvvNation had something to say about all these shenanigans on my Awesomely Luvvie Facebook page and I hollered!

…………………

This string was hilarious:

Aeisha: I KNOW that Janice from HR is on Xanax by this point….these fools getting fired during orientation…

#MYMCNUGGETSTOOKLONGERTOCOOK

#PAINTDRIESLONGERTHANTHESEWHJOBSLAST

#ITLOOKMYDOMINOESLONGERTHANYOUWORKEDHERE

Luvvie: LMAO JANICE IS STRESSED AF.

Aeisha: Janice is tiiiiirrreeeddd and about to take some PTO

Luvvie: And you know they still gon call her while she’s off b/c some epic bullshit will happen. Janice gon quit next week.

Aeisha: Janice is day drinking and writing her resignation at her desk cause she cant take too much more…this merry- go-round of employment is causing her ulcers…cant finish her lunch in peace.

Luvvie: Janice is like “these hoes don’t pay me near enough.”

C.M.: Hell Janice is about to need HR…dis tuuuu
much. She gotta do separation paperwork every 2 days AND go for
unemployment hearings cause won’t no body else come on board.

Aeisha: “Work
in the WH” they said, “It’ll be fun” they said, “You’re in HR you’ll
push papers all day” they said…Janice is about to start punching people if ONE more person doesn’t make it past 30 days.

Myra: Janice got that “who gonna make it the longest” pool going. Y’all know she wins every week.

excerpt:
But that’s not all. Trump doesn’t want his base to perceive him as a loser.

So be prepared for scorched-earth politics from the Oval Office, including more savage verbal attacks on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, more baseless charges of voter fraud in the 2016 election, more specific threats to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, and further escalation of the culture wars.

Most Americans won’t be swayed by these pyrotechnics because they’ve become inured to our unhinged president.

But that’s not the point. The rantings are intended to shore up Trump’s “base” – the third of the country that continues to support him, who still believe they’re “victims” of Obamacare, who are willing to believe Trump himself is the victim of a liberal conspiracy to unseat him.

Trump wants his base to become increasingly angry and politically mobilized so they’ll continue to exert an outsized influence on the Republican Party.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is preparing to redirect resources of the Justice Department’s civil rights division toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, according to a document obtained by The New York Times.

The document, an internal announcement to the civil rights division, seeks current lawyers interested in working for a new project on “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions.”

The announcement suggests that the project will be run out of the division’s front office, where the Trump administration’s political appointees work, rather than its Educational Opportunities Section, which is run by career civil servants and normally handles work involving schools and universities.

An unarmed intercontinental ballistic missile was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base early Wednesday to test the weapon’s reliability to “defend against attacks on the United States and its allies,” the Air Force said.

The Minuteman III missile was fired at 2:10 a.m. from the base northwest of Santa Barbara, according to the Air Force Global Strike Command. The missile, equipped with a single test reentry vehicle, traveled 4,200 miles to a test range near the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

The strike command said the test was “not a response to recent North Korean actions.” Rather the launch “demonstrates that the United States’ nuclear enterprise is safe, secure, effective” and can protect against strikes, the command said.

Good morning. Another day with chaos and drama from the fraud. Now he’s telling bald face lies on world leaders. And I heard one supporter on CNN saying he’s doing a wonderful job. What world does he live in? It’s clearly not here.

Thanks for posting the excellent, informative article on Sally Hemings.

America needs to face the ugliness and cruelty of the past where slaveholders raped their slaves and then became wealthy by often selling their slave sons and daughters. America needs to confess its past sins and wrongs and make amends.

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Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.